Mahablog Explicates James Fallows

The new James Fallows article is behind a subscription wall, but Mahablog has a summary:

• Al Qaeda is not the same organization it was before 9/11. It no longer has the ability to plan, organize, and carry out attacks on the scale of 9/11. But that doesn't mean it's not dangerous: its danger lies not so much in what it can do by itself, but rather in how it can goad the United States into responding: the combination of Al Qaeda and our response is what creates disaster.
• Instead of a single powerful organization (Al Qaeda) with the operational ability to strike the United States as in 9/11, we now have a plethora of start-up organizations all over the world. None of these smaller groups have the money or organizational ability to perpetrate another 9/11; but the sheer number of them makes nuclear proliferation more dangerous than ever, since one of the few ways such groups could inflict damage on the scale of 9/11 would be if one or more of them got hold of nuclear weapons.
• American Muslims deserve much of the credit for keeping the United States terror-free for the past five years. According to Marc Sageman, an expert on terrorist groupings interviewed by James Fallows and quoted in Barbara's post, "The patriotism of the American Muslim community has been grossly underreported."